Category: Design for Environment (DfE)

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Sustainable Electronics Funding Opportunity: EPA P3 Program, Deadline 12/17/13

P3 Program Logo“P3” is the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “People, Prosperity, and Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.” As stated on the program website, this is “a unique college competition for designing solutions for a sustainable future. P3 offers students quality hands-on experience that brings their classroom learning to life. The competition has two phases. For the first phase of the competition, teams are awarded a $15,000 grant to develop their idea. They bring the design in April to the National Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC to compete for the P3 Award and a grant of $90,000 to take their design to real world application.” Teams are meant to be interdisciplinary and composed of undergraduates and/or graduates, and the main goals of the program are to engage future scientists and members of industry in innovation for sustainability, while fostering the demonstration and development of sustainable technologies.

The current solicitation closes December 17, 2013. EPA anticipates funding approximately 40 grants for Phase I under this RFA. The projected EPA award amount for each Phase I grant is up to $15,000 for its one year duration. The current Request for Applications is available here, and guidance on how to apply is available at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/p3/apply/index.html. Application materials and a list of EPA contacts are available at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_p3.html#Materials.

The program has been around for several years (see the archive of past P3 projects on the program website), but few P3 projects have focused specifically on sustainable electronics issues. Some notable examples include a New Jersey Institute of Technology proposal for development of a “National Electronics Product Reuse and Recycling System,” and the recent Purdue University project related to “Recycling of Liquid Crystal Displays for Maximum Resource Recovery.” (Dr. Fu Zhao recently visited the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) to present a seminar/webinar on the LCD monitor recycling project; the archived presentation, slides and abstract are available in the ISTC Sustainability Seminars archive.) Other projects have focused on creating more energy efficient electronic devices, such as the East Central University project on “Making a Solid State Organic Photovoltaic Cell More Efficient and Economically Viable.” Still others are tangentially relevant to a more sustainable system for electronics because they focus on issues like consumer awareness (e.g. the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor “AWARE” concept for informing purchasing decisions) or using electronics to help solve real world sustainability problems (e.g. concepts for LED lighting applications in developing countries, like those proposed by student teams from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or the Rochester Institute of Technology).

As Dr. Zhao pointed out in his presentation on the Purdue LCD monitor recycling project, there is great potential for more P3 teams to focus on sustainable electronics issues. In fact, if you read the current P3 Request for Applications closely, a list of research areas is listed and applications are expected to address one or more of these areas. See Part E under Section I: Funding Opportunity Description at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_p3.html#Synopsis. One of these areas is “Materials and Chemicals” and examples of areas of interest listed within this overall research area include “Projects that may reduce electronics waste or promote substitution and/or recovery of rare earth rare earth elements,” “Less toxic flame retardants,” and in general the redesign of products to use less resources in production and consumption, use more environmentally benign materials, etc. So there is a current desire from the EPA to see applications focusing on more sustainable electronic product design, manufacture, consumption, and end-of-life management. Faculty researchers and students interested in these issues should consider applying for the current P3 Awards cycle, or planning to submit applications in future cycles.

If you apply and receive an award, tell us about your project in the “Comments” section of this post. SEI would love to follow your progress.

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Sponsor Spotlight: Arrow Electronics

Arrow Electronics logoThe Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is grateful to the sponsors who make it possible to award cash prizes as part of the International Sustainable Electronics Competition.

Arrow Electronics is one of our Silver level sponsors for the 2013 competition. SEI spoke with Carol Baroudi, Global Sustainability & Compliance for Arrow Electronics, recently about what the company does and their thoughts on sustainable electronics issues.

SEI: Arrow’s corporate web site states that your company “provides specialized services and expertise across the product lifecycle.” Can you explain the services Arrow provides that relate to different stages of electronic product lifecycles, and how this relates to sustainability?

Carol Baroudi: Arrow provides specialized services and expertise throughout the product lifecycle beginning with product design all the way through to a products end of life, and everywhere in between. Throughout the product lifecycle, Arrow takes our role of “guiding innovation forward” seriously.

Starting at the very beginning of product life, Arrow ethically sources electronic components for major manufacturers. We also influence product design and work to improve efficiencies in production and logistics. Our ethical supply due diligence includes reporting to the UN Global Compact and Carbon Disclosure Project as well as adherence to Dodd-Frank for Conflict Mineral reporting.

In the aftermarket space, our Value Recovery group focuses on what might be considered a product’s end of life. We do our best to extend the usable life of electronics through repair and refurbishment, returning them for use as “redeployed,” sold or donated assets. When electronics are no longer serviceable, we harvest usable parts. Before sending non usable assets to be recycled, we de-manufacture them, breaking devices down as closely as possible to commodity materials that are in turn send to specialized downstream partners. We reclaim all materials to the extent possible and return the commodities to the manufacturing stream. No electronics are landfilled. No non-functioning equipment is exported. No child or prison labor is used. No electronics are incinerated except certain media where mandated by security policy. We maintain complete transparency of all materials. Arrow facilities are compliant with both the e-Stewards and R2/Rios standards.

SEI: What is Arrow doing to incorporate sustainability into its own operations?

Carol Baroudi: Arrow has a strong culture of ethical and responsible business practices. Our director of Corporate Social Responsibility oversees all aspects of our corporate responsibility strategy, including sustainability. And, our global green team is actively working to propagate best practices across the corporation in 56 countries.

For example, most of Arrow’s distribution centers have already incorporated low-energy lighting. We aggressively recycle materials that come into our distribution centers and carefully scrutinize our packaging to determine the most sustainable options.

Arrow’s Value Recovery centers maintain the highest environmental and data security standards for the processing of electronics. We repair and refurbish equipment that can be reused, including redeployment, resale or donation. Devices that cannot be repaired are harvested for usable parts before going through our Recycle IT Right® process, which de-manufactures equipment down to as close to commodity material as possible. These separated commodities are sent to certified downstream processors specializing in specific materials such as plastic, leaded glass, copper, etc.

SEI: In your company’s business experiences, have any issues emerged which clearly require further research, education, infrastructure, or policy to improve the sustainability of the end-of-life management of electronics?

Carol Baroudi: Currently, in the U.S. there is no federal regulation regarding the handling of end of life electronics. The inconsistencies between state regulations sometimes result in landfill dumping.  Also, there’s evidence of illegal exporting of electronic waste and abuse of trust from unregulated recyclers that claim to be properly disposing of electronic devices. Europe has more broadly applied e-waste regulations, but these directives can be subject to interpretation. Around the world, emerging economies generally lack appropriate infrastructure for the reclamation of electronics, as well as the appropriate regulations. Overall, we need education, infrastructure and global policy to reverse the expanding tide of electronic waste.

SEI: Is there anything that electronics manufacturers could do to make your job easier? What about legislators?

Carol Baroudi: We encourage manufacturers to design with reuse in mind – using reclaimable materials, ease of separation, and reusable parts. We would welcome guidelines that make electronics easy to repair and repurpose.

SEI: What do you think is an example of an important fact about electronics management and distribution that consumers in general don’t realize?

Carol Baroudi: The biggest gaps lie in education. There is a lack of understanding of why it’s important to handle electronics properly – along with the environmental and data security implications.

SEI: What do you hope participants in the International Sustainable Electronics Competition will take away from the experience of entering the competition?

Carol Baroudi: We hope that tomorrow’s electronics and sustainability innovators will see opportunities to develop more sustainable electronics, from the design cradle to the end-of-life de-manufacturing process.

Thanks, Carol! See http://www.ewaste.illinois.edu/sponsors.cfm for a list of this year’s competition sponsors. Note that logos, links, and descriptions of services provided above are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as endorsements by the competition, the Sustainable Electronics Initiative, the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, the Prairie Research Institute, or the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Juror Spotlight – Bill Olson

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

We are grateful to Bill Olson, Director of Sustainability and Stewardship for Motorola Mobile Devices for his long-term commitment to the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. Bill has been with us since the beginning, serving as a juror four times since the competition began as a local event on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign back in 2009. He has been a juror more than any other individual, sitting out only for the 2010 competition (for more information on past competitions, see our online competition archives). Despite his busy schedule, he has provided valuable feedback on numerous competition entries over the years, and has presented at two past SEI symposia on his work at Motorola.

In his role at Motorola, Bill drives go-to-market strategy for green mobile device products and technologies, and has championed the adoption of ECOMOTO principles across several Motorola business units. ECOMOTO focuses on the realization of environmentally sound, seamless Motorola mobile products and seeks to deliver sustained business impact through green materials and innovative ecodesign practices as can be found in the world’s first carbon free phones built with post consumer recycled plastic: W233 RENEW and MOTOCUBO A45 ECO and the world’s first “green” android phones introduced in 2010 – CITRUS and SPICE.

Bill started the ECOMOTO initiative during his previous role in Motorola Corporate Research, where he headed labs dedicated to International and Environmental Research. Bill’s team in Europe conducted testing on hundreds of Motorola products to ensure they met environmental regulatory requirements of the EU (WEEE/RoHS), American and Asian markets. His lab in China worked closely with manufacturing, engineering and the supply chain to achieve improvements in factory productivity, yield and product reliability.

We value Bill’s input because he is directly involved with innovation everyday and understands what it takes to get a great concept to market in today’s world.  With 23 U.S. patents and more than 40 publications, Bill is a guru in his field. Thanks, Bill, for all of your support!

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Registration Now Open for 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition

International E-Waste Design Competition LogoThe Sustainable Electronics Initiative at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is pleased to announce that registration is open for the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition. Participants will explore ideas to address the social and environmental impacts of electronics, and contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design for current and future technology products. Entries can be made in one of two categories—“Product” and “Non-product”–with criteria that incorporate the ideas of reuse and prevention throughout. This allows for students of all disciplines to participate in ways to reduce the generation of electronic waste and extend electronic product life cycles.

Teamwork across disciplines, backgrounds, and ages is encouraged. One entry per person or team (5 person maximum) is allowed. The competition is open to current college and university students as well as recent graduates from universities around the world. Registration is free. Expert jurors award cash prizes to the top three projects in each category. The submission deadline is November 1, 2013 at 4:59 Central time. Winners will be announced on December 5th.

Entries must include an original video composition uploaded to YouTube, along with supporting materials uploaded to the registration page of the competition web site. See the competition web site, www.ewaste.illinois.edu for details on registration requirements.

Good luck with your entries!

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Juror Spotlight – Craig Boswell

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition staff would like to welcome Craig Boswell, Co-Founder and President of HOBI International, Inc. to the 2013 competition jury. HOBI International is an IT and cellular asset management and electronics recycling company. Craig plays a key role in developing HOBI’s processes and procedures for data security, asset tracking and asset disposition services. He is HOBI’s chief industry consultant on demanufacturing, design for disassembly, and reverse logistics programs. He has also published and presented numerous papers on the recycling of electronic products and the keys to designing more recyclable products.

According to their website, “HOBI’s Mobile Device services group focuses on the resale and recycling of cellular assets. Their client list includes 3 of the 4 national wireless operators in the US, 4 major device OEMs, and many recycling partners that trust us to maximize the value of their cellular assets while protecting sensitive corporate or client data. They process for resale and recycling over 4 million cell phones per year. Their parts recovery division de-manufactures millions of cell phones per year in support of a robust repair market.”

Craig’s background includes nine years experience as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments, Inc. As a member of Texas Instrument’s engineering staff, he managed electronics design projects and was extensively involved in development and deployment of electronics manufacturing techniques. He was also project manager for the deployment of a major shift in the production process from traditional CFC-based cleaning technologies to more environmentally friendly, no-clean solder technologies. As part of this program team, he was an active member of the IEEE Environmental Technologies subcommittee. This committee was central in developing an industry conference that brought together OEMs, academia, and environmental organizations to discuss key issues in electronics disposition technologies.

Craig is thus well qualified to assess entries for this competition, because he has approached electronics from different ends of the life cycle spectrum–both on the design and manufacturing side and the end-of-life management side. In fact, Craig presented a seminar at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center last fall called Closing the Loop on Electronics Devices–Design for Recycling, in which he spoke about how his experiences in his current role have allowed him to look back at his experiences as part of design projects and realize that some of the design choices he and colleagues made actually made recycling more difficult. Recycling is sometimes simply not a part of the consideration of engineers and/or industrial designers creating a product. Through efforts like the International Sustainable Electronics Competition, SEI is hoping to ensure that students who may one day work for electronics manufacturers go into those situations with sustainability issues like design for recycling already in mind.

Craig and his colleagues at HOBI International have made it their business to understand design issues related to electronics and curb the issue of electronics waste in a way that is profitable. His expertise and feedback will be valuable and we appreciate the time Craig is donating to the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition.

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Juror Spotlight – Kyle Wiens

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition welcomes Kyle Wiens to this year’s jury. Kyle is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, an online repair community internationally renowned  for their open source repair manuals and product tear-downs. Kyle relates to the ingenuity of college students, as he launched iFixit out of his Cal Poly dorm room, along with Luke Soules. iFixit has grown to empower upwards of 15 million people  to repair their broken items. Recently Kyle started Dozuki, a software company that is revolutionizing online technical documentation for manufacturers. Kyle is very active in the field of electronics exports having testified in front of the International Trade Commission, and has been on the front lines of developing global environmental standards.

Kyle is a perfect juror for this kind of competition as he understands creative minds and can provide effective “peer-like” feedback to those who successfully enter this year’s competition based on his experiences developing the iFixit concept.

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Juror Spotlight – Lynn Rubinstein

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition would like to welcome new juror, Lynn Rubinstein, Executive Director of the Northeast Recycling Council and Founder/Program Manager of the State Electronics Challenge. Lynn has been actively engaged in electronics recycling issues for more than 15 years. The  State Electronics Challenge encourages state, tribal, regional, and local governments, including schools to responsibly manage office equipment by purchasing greener office equipment, reduction the impact  during use, and managing obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way.

Lynn’s dedication to the area of recycling and electronics is apparent as she is also the co-founder of the Electronics Recycling  Coordination Clearinghouse and is a founding Board member and Chair of  R2 Solutions. It is this dedication as well as her Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law that we find so valuable to the competition and we are looking forward to Lynn’s perspective on this year’s entries.

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Competition ‘Veteran’ from University of Limerick Pursues Interest in E-Waste Reuse

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

Damian Coughlan is no stranger to the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. For two years in a row, the now Ph.D. researcher at the University of Limerick has won a Silver award for his entry Loopbook (2012) and as part of a bigger team with the entry Laptop Design for the Future (2011).

We recently caught up with Damian to see how the competition has affected his educational and career aspirations.  Coughlan stated, “Receiving the Silver Award in this competition has had a huge impact on my current circumstances. Since graduating with my degree in August 2012 I have received a scholarship to continue research towards a PhD. The funding is being provided by the Irish Research Council and the European Recycling Platform. I had mentioned the award from 2012 as part of my application and I have no doubt that these awards helped me considerably. I have now started the PhD in Sustainability since October 2012. I visited TU Delft in the past week to gather some feedback for my research and my presentation featured my awards which definitely helped raise my profile. My current research is looking at the subject of electronic waste [and] the possibilities of reusing the waste in a different context.”

This year, as an optional extension of the competition, the UIUC Technology Entrepreneur Center  has offered to provide constructive  feedback to students who opt-in as part of their submission. This advice is not a means of taking a concept to market, but is offered as a resource for entrants to explore furthering their concept with appropriate resources. When we asked Damian about his plans for Loopbook, he stated, “Regarding the Loopbook, I had considered the option of bringing it to market but currently I feel there are too many barriers to be overcome by technology before the Loopbook could be ready as a consumer product. However I do still think that it could be a great idea if it could be fully developed. I do think the option of bringing a possible product to market would be great outlet for the competition and innovation.”

We wish Damian the best in his Ph.D. studies and research. We know he will be someone to look out for in the future of innovative computing technologies.

As a reminder, registration for this year’s competition opens on September 1, 2013. See the competition web site for complete details. Registration is free, and cash prizes are awarded.

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Juror Spotlight – Professor William Bullock

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition is delighted to welcome UIUC Industrial Design Professor and Product Interaction Research Laboratory (PIRL) Director William Bullock back to the competition in his new role as juror. Professor Bullock  was the founder of the original competition in 2009 on the University of Illinois campus. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in product design and development for over a decade and recently developed the first course at UIUC on sustainable product design. He collaborated with engineering colleagues to develop a course on the topic of electronic waste (e-waste) and organized the annual international electronic waste (e-waste) design competition, which is now known as the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. His career spans three decades as an academician, administrator and practitioner, and includes the direction and advancement of industrial design programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Georgia Institute of Technology, and Auburn University. He is an active Fellow in the Industrial Designers Society of America, and a National Association of Schools of Art and Design accreditation evaluator. Bill has served several terms on the IDSA National Education Council and is current Chair of its SAGE section and Vice Chair of the Design Foundation.

PIRL links education and research design in the classroom where advanced students from engineering, design and marketing collaborate to conduct product development studies for industry. As an affiliate faculty member with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) his current research focuses on design for the environment and development of sustainable product designs. At ISTC he has helped build the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), which is dedicated to the development and implementation of a more sustainable system for designing, producing, reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling electronic devices.

We feel that Professor Bullock will add a unique perspective to this year’s competition as someone who has special ties to the competition and appreciates the growth and direction it’s taken since it’s inception.

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Competition Inspiration: Digitizer

The 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition begins in less than a month. The spirit of this competition is to prompt the industrialized world to dialogue about product designs and non-product concepts for environmentally responsible green computing and entertainment. The goals of this competition are to learn about ways to extend the useful lifecycle of electronic products, reuse electronic scrap for new and productive means, explore ideas to address the social and environmental impacts of electronics, and contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design for current and future technology products. We invite you to create a broad range of concepts and innovations to address these issues. Engineering, design, sustainability, or business knowledge will be helpful, but are not required for success in this competition. We encourage participation from interested students and recent graduates from any academic discipline. See the “Rules” section of the competition web site for complete details. Registration is free, and cash prizes will be awarded.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be featuring some of the winning videos from previous years’ competitions as inspiration for those of you who may be considering entering. Below, check out a concept called “Digitizer” for making a film camera function like a digital camera when desired. The unit was also conceived to be manufactured from e-waste, thus preventing the generation of e-waste by keeping older cameras from being discarded, and/or giving analog cameras a dual function, and reusing scrap that might otherwise be landfilled. This concept was 1st place in the “Reuse” Category in 2012 and was submitted by J. Makai Catudio and Ryan Barnes. (Note that the categories have changed this year. See our previous blog post and the “Categories” descriptions on the competition web site.)

What can you imagine as a solution to the environmental and social problems related to electronic device design, production, use, and end-of-life management? See more concepts from previous winners on the SEI You Tube channel.

And for those of you who are not eligible to enter, if you find ideas like Digitizer inspiring and want to support SEI’s efforts to encourage students around the world to consider the impacts of our ubiquitous electronics, consider making a donation in support of the competition. Your gift will go toward cash prizes and program administration, and will be acknowledged on the “Sponsors” page of the competition web site. Questions can be directed to Joy Scrogum.